Reddit reviews The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress

Peter Singer, to me, is the absolute clearest writer in philosophy, and I think he has an incredible knack for interesting theses. As a result, I think you can start pretty much anywhere with him.

I do work in ethics, metaethics, and applied ethics, though. The two articles I see referenced over and over again are "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" and "Ethics and Intuitions". The former is a valid, tight, and incredibly fun-to-discuss argument about how we should donate all unnecessary funds to end abject poverty. The latter is an evolutionary debunking argument against intuitions and in favor of the practical reason that standard utilitarian views use. If you're into the former, he wrote a very accessible book recently, stemming from lectures at Yale, called The Most Good You Can Do, which I can recommend to pretty much anyone as an easy and provocative read. But if you're interested more in the theoretical stuff, as in how objective ethics is and how much it might regulate our lives, check out The Expanding Circle.

Overall, if you're interested in almost any applied ethical debate, Singer has written something relevant. You might just start there out of interest. But I really don't think you can go wrong with anything.

He's pointing out that we shouldn't just do the things that are evolutionarily favourable, that isn't a sufficient reason. For example we have an evolutionary tendency to treat those we view as 'outsiders' cruelly. Should we unthinkingly act on this tendency?

As a side note, a really good book on evolution and morality is Peter Singer's The Expanding Circle, which I would recommend reading if you're interested in this stuff.

> when Haidt notes that left-wingers don't rely on Loyalty/betrayal as much as right-wingers do, could it be instead true that left-wingers see everyone on earth as part of their "ingroup", which means that the only way to "betray" is to go against the whole world? While, on the other hand, the right-wingers still see their "ingroup" as being only "people like themselves" (e.g. white, Protestant, anglophone, American, etc.)?

That's the way I see it too actually - that liberals value loyalty more than Haidt claims but are just loyal to a wider group than conservatives. But I disagree on the extent to which the average liberal can be said to view the whole world as their in-group.

I largely view morality and its progress over time like Peter Singer's "expanding circle", where the kernel of our moral intuitions came from the benefits of cooperating with your "in-group", and moral progress comes from reflecting on that to realize that we should expand that principle to a larger group. And I think the average liberal has a wider circle of empathy than the average conservative.

But I think that circle is still significantly limited by nationality. For instance, the average liberal seems to focus the most on national inequality and how to redistribute more money within their own country. There's not nearly as much emphasis placed on foreign aid or immigration as there is on progressive taxation, expanded national health insurance, expanded minimum wage, etc. IMO the most effective policy tool to address inequality, poverty, and oppression, by far, is to have near-open borders, even though that would mean we would need to reduce our welfare programs. But that idea is often met with hostility from many on the left, out of belief that we should prioritize "our own" (loyalty!).

I think the moral circle for the average liberal is also limited by time. There's much more interest in providing more for people now and less interest in funding things that are focused on helping future people. For instance, public spending on R&D relative to public spending on welfare programs has been in a long-term decline.

I try to value all humans equally, regardless of location or time of birth. This leaves me with policy preferences that are sometimes to the right of the average liberal, but for reasons that I view as being to the left of the average liberal.

Something I read not too long ago on this that really stuck with me was this post on Scott Sumner's blog:

> I think the biggest area where I disagree with the left is that I’m way less nationalistic than most liberals, or Pat Buchanan. If anything I care more about the overseas poor, because they are much poorer. I actually find some of the things I read on the progressive side (and on the right as well) to be almost grotesquely insensitive. In recent decades living standards in places like China, India and even Africa have grown considerably faster than in the developed world. And yet we are constantly told that inequality is getting worse and that it is the defining issue of our time. If we dissent we are scolded for being “insensitive.”
>
> Remember the famous joke about the Lincoln assassination? It would have been insensitive to say to Mrs. Lincoln; “Yes, your husband was shot, but the play was pretty good.” In 1945 it would have been insensitive to say to a European; “Yes, there was WWII and the Holocaust, but overall Europe’s done well in the past 5 years because the economies of Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain have boomed.” And it is insensitive to say; “Yes, billions have been raised out of abject misery but inequality is getting worse because the gap between average Americans and the top 1% is widening.”

>being compassionate, that assistance can not in any way hinder those close to me, for I will have breached my social/fraternal/parental/etc contract.

Economics (as in the OP) is about trade offs, how much suffering for the other is acceptable as long as everyone is unhindered within the social/fraternal/parental/etc contract? An infinite amount of suffering for very slight hindrance? The line must be drawn.

This is based on Peter Singers idea of expanding circle of ethics, its a very interesting idea if you get a chance to check it out.

> I meant it (slavery) was a moral crime/atrocity/evil, then and now.

I agree.

> I'll be the first to agree the ancient Greeks and Romans shouldn't be thought of as beacons of enlightenment...They were, on the whole, brutal warrior/slave societies in a constant state of warfare with everyone and everything around them.

And so was most everyone else. Humans are an obviously violent species and for the simple reason than that violence is supremely effective. Humans have been abusing both other humans and other forms of life since there was a thing called humans. The idea that you will find a human community free of violence is an absurdity because if a society like this existed, they could simply be dominated by a more violent society.

However, I for one am comforted by the fact that the human species as a whole has been becoming less violent as civilization moves forward and I am confident that this trend will slowly continue. All the steps forward in civilization from Sumerian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Egyptian, Arab, and so many other cultures should all be considered beacons of enlightenment, or perhaps better thought of as ladder rungs, in our ever expanding circle of ethical progress.

Of course my time in existence is vanishingly small but there is good reason to think that there will be less suffering 5000 years from now just as there is less suffering now then 5000 years ago.

Sorry but I couldn't get more than half way through that, your tone is horrible. Try reading Singer's The Expanding Circle or Pinker's Better Angels.

> Under your theory a dog could be considered more intelligent than a human if that dog could empathise more than the human.

MFW